Gaudete Sunday Follow-Up

In my post of last week, a few days before Gaudete Sunday, I had spoken of the importance of not taking a minimalist view about the acquisition and use of Rose vestments (i.e. simply for reason that they are used only two Sundays of the liturgical year). I further noted that the Church does not put forward these usages frivolously, but rather that there is a symbolic meaning behind them. Of course, if priests do not already own their own set, or if the parish they find themselves in does not have such vestments to use, evidently this Gaudete past would find no other option than the use of violet. That said, with this matter fresh in mind, now may well be the best time to forge ahead and seek to acquire these vestments. Accordingly, be you a priest, or be you a patron, I would encourage you to start making those plans now. After all, Laetare Sunday is only a few months away.

Bearing those realities in mind, I still thought it would be of interest to know what you did see out there this Sunday past. So then, an NLM poll:

In addition, I thought some of our readers would enjoy the following photos of another rose set that our own Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., sent to me yesterday. The vestments come from St Albert's Priory in Edinburgh and Fr. Lawrence notes that "the chasuble is from the Ditchling Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic in a sort of conical shape, and was probably dyed and woven by Valentine KilBride who joined the Guild in 1926."

Very interesting and very dignified I think -- and certainly another of the diverse ways that noble beauty can be expressed, this time as seen through the lens of a vestment of great sobriety and simplicity, but a sobriety and simplicity that does not lack in beauty and warmth and which is clearly an echo from our Roman liturgical patrimony.